More than a year ago, the New York Stock Exchange went after a group of brokers connected with Oakford Corp. on its trading floor who it said were cheating. They were placing orders for their own accounts ahead of customers, the Exchange said, making money at the expense of those they should have been serving.

I said in a column back on March 6, 1998 that the eight accused floor brokers – while obviously doing some naughty stuff – should complain that they were being singled out for something “they all do.”

And I said in this space a few weeks after the first column that the NYSE would soon be going after others. “There are others we are looking at,” Big Board chairman Richard Grasso told me in an interview. Grasso said more action would probably come in a couple of months.

Actually, it took slightly more than a year.

The Wall Street Journal caught up with the story Wednesday, saying “federal prosecutors and securities regulators are investigating the trading practices of as many as 64 brokers on the floor of the NYSE who may have illegally shared profits with customers.”

That practice is against the law.

The paper said more than half of the 64 “are believed to have ties to Oakford.”

The Journal added that the SEC was beginning an investigation into how its floor brokers are regulated. A very good source of mine says the SEC is actually looking into whether the NYSE is guilty of a so-called 19B violation – essentially a failure to supervise.

Here’s something even juicer that you’ll probably read in the Journal a few months from now.

One of the first witnesses in the Oakford case, I’m told by this very reliable source, was prompted into cooperating because he had drug charges looming. It didn’t involve anything that happened on the floor of the exchange, just in his personal life.

This same source estimates that 60 percent of all floor brokers either illegally share profits or put their own trades in front of customers trades so they can profit.

The NYSE couldn’t comment.

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We will all miss Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, but not nearly as much as the gang on Wall Street that can’t invest straight.

I assume that Lawrence Summers, his replacement, will be equally cooperative in bailing out losing investments on Wall Street.

But Summers will have to bend a good distance backwards to top Rubin, who not only had Washington save the butts of a bunch of well-heeled Americans who foolishly had invested in Mexico (many of whom happened to be clients of his old firm, Goldman Sachs & Co.) but was also instrumental in riding to the rescue of the geniuses at Long-Term Capital Management. That’s the hedge fund that nearly sank the entire world financial system last year.

Rubin’s legacy will include a fabulous economy built on a stock market bubble and loyalty to a president who didn’t deserve it.

But the Treasury Secretary’s record has a major blot. Under his – and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s – leadership, the Washington bailouts of the rich have left ordinary people with unreasonable expectations for the financial markets.

If something goes wrong, Washington will fix it, is the current wrongheaded thinking among the masses.

That’s the kind of attitude that causes financial bubbles that always lead to disasters. And that’s what causes reputations like Rubin’s to be lost in the history books.

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A jury in Pensacola, Fla. found the former Speaker of the Florida House and his wife guilty of intentionally hiding $400,000 in consulting fees, much of which was given to them by Bally’s.

Bally’s has a letter from the U.S. prosecutor down there saying it and executive Arthur Goldberg are not the subject or the target of the investigation.

But during the trial, according to several sources who were there, witnesses were repeatedly asked questiones that went beyond the scope of tax evasion and into the area of public corruption.

Attorneys for former Speaker Bo Johnson protested about the questions but Judge Lacey Collier allowed them to be answered.

Investigators from New Jersey were present during the entire trial. Bally’s will have to be approved in New Jersey and Vegas to take over gaming licenses it recently agreed to acquire from Starwood Hotels and Casinos.

And Bally’s already has several other licenses to run casinos that are overseen by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission.